Psych Lecture Notes

Lecture 2: Development - Pt.1 - Prenatal and Infant Development

● The study of human development is the examination of continuity and change
across the lifespan.
○ Our genetic material stays the same from conception to death.
○ Our development (physical and emotional) changes from conception to
death.
○ Personality can either change or continue across the lifespan.
● The 4 main periods of human development…
1. Prenatal period and infancy (conception - 2-3 years)
2. Childhood (2-3 - 11 years)
3. Adolescence (12-17 years)
4. Adulthood (18 years - death)
● Most people, when describing their earliest memory, remember something from
the ages of either 2, 3 or 4.
○ This memory is usually emotional.
● The failure of autobiographical memory leads us to believe that our experiences
as young infants are less relevant.
○ However, early experiences (even if we don’t remember) are crucial to
normal development.
○ The early experiences give rise to individual differences like personality.
● In the utero, we have many experiences prior to being born.
● Gestational Age: defined as the beginning of the women’s last menstrual cycle.
○ It’s used since women might now remember when they got pregnant, but
will remember when they last got a period.
● Germinal Stage/Period of Zygote (0-2 Weeks) - In this stage, the egg is preparing
to implant itself into the wall of the mother’s uterus.
● Period of Embryo (3-8 Weeks) - this is where we start seeing the development of
major organ systems.
● Period of Fetus (9 weeks to birth) - this is where more motor development
occurs, and the fetus will move around more. It will also have sensory
experiences and start to learn about the environment around them.
● The fetus will experience many stimuli in utero…
○ Tastes and smells.
○ Sounds.
○ Tactile sensation.
○ Sights.
● Fetal Vision - fetuses don’t see much, since little light is able to penetrate the
uterus.
○ Exogenous Experience - experience coming from outside the organism.
 ○ Endogenous Experience - stimuli generated by the organism itself.
● By 22 weeks gestational age, the fetuses' eyes are developed enough to see
light and fire retinal cells and create their own light information.
● Fetal Audition - this is more intense then fetal vision, since we have lots of
evidence of fetal audition.
○ The fetal heartbeat changes in reaction to external voices being played.
○ The fetal heartbeat is different in reaction to music than it is to human
speech.
○ Newborn babies (a few minutes old!) recognize their mother’s language
and their mother’s voice.
● Fetal Olfaction - a study done on 3-day old neonates found that they turn their
heads longer toward familiar versus unfamiliar amniotic fluid.

Lecture 3: Development - Pt. 2

● Exposure to teratogens (harmful external substances) can cause damage or
even death to the fetus during development.
○ Alcohol is the most common teratogen.
● Depending on the time of development during pregnancy, the organism can be
affected differently.
○ In the first 2 weeks, teratogens don’t affect the organism much since the
organism doesn’t even make it this far anyway. The woman may also not
even know she was pregnant.
○ During the period of the embryo, is when the organism is MOST affected
by teratogens since this is when most major organ systems are
developed.
● The following chart shows at which stage, if a mother ingest a teratogen, leads to
which part of the fetus being affected.
● Alcohol can enter the fetal blood stream, without being broken down.
○ The fetus doesn’t yet have enzymes to break down alcohol like adults.
○ This leads to FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder)
○ The most common physical abnormality from this is a low nasal bridge, no
philtrum or a thin upper lip.
○ It also causes intellectual, attention or behavior disorders.
● There’s no such thing as a “typical” birth, it’s different across cultures.
○ In Canada, many women who give birth have never attended a birth
before, whereas many women in other countries attend births from a
young age.
● The average newborn neonate spends ⅔ (majority) of their day sleeping.
○ Quiet Sleep: calm not moving around.
○ Active Sleep: moving around and making little noises.
● Non-REM Sleep: when an organism is not moving while sleeping or dreaming.
● Neonates spend 2 hours per day crying.
○ It’s at its worst around 6 weeks.
○ Most often the crying is non-communicative (it doesn’t mean anything).
This is why there’s not much to do when they cry.
○ It can also be due to hunger, discomfort, pain and overstimulation.
● Non-communicative crying peaks around late afternoon and evening.
● ALL infants go through a period of increased crying between birth and 6 week.s
○ Some infants cry more than others (colic)
● Perceptual Development - the organism's ability to detect and make sense of the
stimuli around them .
 ○ It begins in the utero, but is much richer after birth.
● Sensation: sensory organs’ detection of physical signals in the environment.
(ears vibrating in response to noise)
● Perception: organization and interpretation of the sensory information into
coherent understanding of objects, individuals and events. (taking the vibrations
from noise to the brain to recognize them)
● It’s hard to measure infant perception, since they cannot communicate verbally
yet.
○ Preferential Looking - relies on the phenomenon that infants choose to
spend more of their time looking at objects and events that are interesting,
stimulating or familiar.
■ Visual Acuity can be determined through paddles each with
different patterns. 1-month-old infants prefer to look at patterned
images over gray images.
● In their first month of life, infants' visual acuity is approximately equal to 20/120.
It’s equivalent to only seeing the TOP line of a visual test plate.
● The motor skills of newborns consist mostly of reflexes like grasping, rooting,
sucking, swallowing and tonic neck reflex. Some of which stay with us for the
entire lifespan.
● Development of motor behaviors follows 2 rules…
1. Cephalocaudal Rule: “top to bottom” rule that describes the
tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the
head to the feet.
2. Proximodistal Rule: “inside-to-outside” rule that describes
the tendency for motor skills to emerge in sequence from the
center to the periphery.
● The following chart shows the stages of motor development for NORTH
AMERICAN infants.
 ● Motor development and Visual development co-occur, as motor development
affects visual development.
○ Walking provides more information than crawling does. When crawling,
the baby will most likely look down, and look up every once in a while.
When walking, the baby will get richer visual stimuli.

Lecture 4: Development - Pt. 3

● In addition to motor and visual development, children also learn to THINK about
the world.
○ This emergence of the ability to think and understand is called cognitive
development.
● Jean Piaget pioneered understanding of children’s cognitive development by
dividing it up into stages.
○ Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)
○ Pre-operational Stage (2-6)
○ Concrete operational Stage (6-11)
○ Formal operational stage (11+)
● Piaget believed children moved from one stage to the next, based on how they
gain knowledge about the world…
 ○ Children acquire knowledge.
○ Children organize this knowledge into a schema.
○ Children acquire NEW knowledge.
○ Children add this new knowledge to their existing schema (assimilation)
○ Children acquire new knowledge that does not fit within their existing
schema.
○ Children modify their schema to fit this new knowledge (accomodation)
● During the sensorimotor stage, infants rely on their movement and senses to
learn about the world.
● During the preoperational stage, children move from egocentrism to
sociocentrism. They start caring about others, rather than just themselves.
○ Children develop Theory of Mind - the understanding that human behavior
is guided by mental representations, and that these mental
representations differ across individuals.
● We can measure whether or not a child has developed a theory of mind, through
false belief tasks.
○ Change of Location Task (sally-anne task) - Most 3 year olds fail this. In
this task, there’s a basket and box in the room. Sally puts a ball in the
basket then leaves, while Anne moves the ball from the basket to the box.
The 3 year olds will not understand that WE would look in the box, since
we know Anne put the ball in the box, but not understand why Sally
wouldn’t.
○ Unexpected Contents Task - Most 3 and 4 year olds fail this. The adult will
hand the child a box of something they’re familiar with (ex, candy). Then
the adult will say to open it up, and see, while something else is in it. As
adults, we’d say the child would say the box has candy in it, since we
know the child has no idea yet. Children on the other hand, would argue
the opposite.
● Piaget believed infants are more egocentric than older children.
● Sociocentrism of humans is one of our most defining features, even from birth.
● Human children will form bonds with caregivers.
○ This emotional bond is called attachment. It’s essential to healthy human
development.
○ We can measure differences in attachment.
● We measure differences of attachment to the extent to which an infant uses their
caregiver as a secure base, or how they react to reunions with the caregiver after
short separations.
○ Strange Situation Procedure - the researchers measure how much the
infant reacts to the above.
● The creator of SSP, Mary, argued infants can be either securely or insecurely
attached to their caregivers.
○ It’s healthier for children to be securely attached, since it predicts many
outcomes in adulthood.
■ Academic achievement.
■ Emotional health.
■ Relationship quality.
■ Self-esteem.
● Young children tend to describe themselves in physical terms, and in positive
terms. They have a positive bias.
○ Self-Enhancement Bias.
○ 4 year olds over-enhance, but 6 year olds do it to a lesser degree.
○ It’s less pronounced for peers than for self.
● Positivity Bias declines as kids enter elementary school, since they start to
compare themselves more. Their cognitive skills also increase, and schools also
begin objective evaluations.

● Young children have high self-esteem.

● Adolescents have relatively lower self-esteem, which is particularly true for
females.
● Adults gain self-esteem gradually throughout development.
● Elderly adults begin to lose self-esteem.
● An individual’s self esteem is relatively consistent across the lifespan.
○ Rank-Order Stability - if you hold a certain rank in your population, you are
likely to hold a similar rank throughout your lifespan. Children with lower
self-esteem tend to have lower self-esteem as adults.
● MUCH VARIABILITY IN SELF-ESTEEM IS DUE TO HEREDITY!
○ Identical twins’ self-esteem correlates to a greater degree than non-twin
siblings.
○ Physical appearance.
○ Physical abilities.
● Adolescence is the period of development between childhood and adulthood.
There’s 2 major physiological changes occurring during adolescence…
○ Onset of puberty.
○ Increase and refinement of connections in the prefrontal cortex.
● It can also be things like…
○ Self-esteem.
○ Identity.
○ Sexuality.
○ Morality.
● Adolescents develop socially through Identity Formation.
● Erik Erikson, argued that during each stage of life, there was a central challenge
people faced, as well as a resolution.
● Erikson believed that during adolescence, identity confusion was the challenge.
He argued people were arguing about their place in society, and then once they
achieved their identity they moved to the next stage.
○ During this stage, there’s an emergence in abstract thinking, especially
personality traits.
○ Also an emergence of self-socialization.
○ They also have a personal fable and imaginary audience, and are
remnants of egocentrism from childhood.
■ Personal Fable - thinking only the challenge you face is unique to
you “no one understands what i’m going through!”
■ Imaginary Audience - believing everyone is watching you and your
actions.
○ They go through identity confusion, identity foreclosure or negative
identity.
■ Negative Identity - forming identity based on opposite expectations
of others (for example, getting a tattoo just in spite of your parents
not wanting you to).
● Adults experience changes in their physiology, but also cause psychological
changes.
○ Changes in memory.
○ Slowing in cognitive processes.
● Since adults have more experience, they’re more efficient users in employing
cognitive strategies, which make up for cognitive decline.
● Different types of memory decline at different rates.
○ Episodic Memory - ability to remember past events, but also short-term.
○ Semantic Memory - ability to remember general information like facts or
stats.

● There’s also differences in attention.

○ Older adults tend to remember positive stimuli better than negative stimuli.
○ Older adults' amygdala (emotional processing centers) are more activated
by positive emotions than by negative ones.
 ● Adolescents tend to have large social groups.
● Older adults have close, smaller social groups, with a greater quality in social
relationships.
○ It’s mostly related to adults’ shorter futures.

Lecture 5: Intelligence - Pt. 1

● Formal Definition of Intelligence - ability to learn or understand, or to deal with
new or challenging situations.
○ The ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.
○ The ability to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria.
● Intelligence predicts many things like…
○ Academic success
○ Economic success
○ Occupational success
● This doesn’t mean someone with a higher or lower level of intelligence will have
more or less of these things. You’re just more likely to do so if you do have
“more” intelligence.
● Intelligence predicts success on standardized tests - used as gatekeepers.
○ Gatekeepers - if you don’t perform well on standardized tests, and can’t
move up further, you’ll be kept at a disadvantage.
○ Effects of intelligence are self-perpetuating - “rich get richer”
● Intelligence can come from genetics (the biggest contributor to intelligence).
○ IQ scores are more similar between identical twins than fraternal twins.
○ IQ scores of adopted children are more similar to their biological children.

● Another contributor is the family environment.

○ IQ scores are positively correlated with protective factors.
○ IQ scores are negatively correlated with risk factors.
● Another contributor is education.
○ School improves children’s intelligence. It doesn’t make them intelligent at
street smarts, but semantic things more so. (facts)
○ IQ scores are higher in the school year, than in the summer. It suggests
the school environment boosts children’s environment.
● Carroll’s 3-Tiered Model of Intelligence
○ General Intelligence (g) - what we mean when we talk about someone
being intelligent. We can’t measure this.
○ Basic Intelligence
■ Fluid Intelligence - ability to problem solve.
■ Crystallized Intelligence - facts you know.
■ General Memory and Learning - how well you can remember and
learn something.
○ A set of specific abilities (s) - what one does to demonstrate intelligence.
 ● Intelligence testing first came from Alfred Binet. He first did it by just using trial
and error and eventually developed the Binet-Simon intelligence test.
○ Puzzles
○ Object naming
○ Counting
● In Canada and US, we use IQ tests in pertinence to Carroll’s 3-Stratum
Framework. Specifically, the bottom tier. (printed language, spatial relations etc).
● We use the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and Wechsler Adult
Intelligence Scale.
● Intelligence tests are different for different ages.
○ Ideational Fluency for 7-year-olds: when you see the word PLANT, what
else do you think of?
○ Naming Facility for 5-year-olds: showing a photo to a child and asking
them to describe what is going on.
● IQ tests are created to produce a standard score in the age group and location in
which they’re presented.
○ Mean score is usually 100.
○ SD is designed to be 15.
○ IQ scores follow a normal distribution.

Lecture 6: Intelligence - Pt. 2

● IQ scores follow a normal distribution.
● IQ tests have been created using centuries worth of research, and tend to
produce consistent results with accurate predictability on life outcomes.
● IQ tests fail to tell us about other aspects of intelligence (how one deals with their
intelligence out in the real world)
● IQ tests may also be biased, and not cater to the skill set/knowledge of
non-Western countries.
 ● IQ tests rely heavily on their use of language. The person might be really good at
math, but not understand the language being used.
● The validity of intelligence tests has been questioned. They say they measure
intelligence, but might actually be measuring knowledge on a culture, or spatial
recognition or math.
● The reliability of tests has been questioned.
○ Short-term reliability is good - test retest reliability over a short period of
time.
○ Long-term reliability is less consistent.
● IQ tests don’t capture all forms of intelligence. One solution to this is using
Gardner’s alternative theory of multiple intelligences.
○ People have 7-8 types of intelligence necessary for functioning and
survival. They’re based on self-report measures and behavioral
observation.

● Evidence for Gardner’s Approach

○ These areas have different developmental patterns (emerge at different
ages).
○ Damage to a specific brain area may impact only one type of intelligence
and not others.
○ Different people have different levels of intelligence.
● Flynn Effect - proposes IQ has risen over time.
○ It can be explained by increased nutrition, increased health, better formal
education and increased “abstraction” - we now put a bigger emphasis on
abstract thinking.
○ There’s more likely steeper slopes in developing countries, since they’re
now getting lots of “modern” technology all at once.
○ The Flynn effect has slowed down today, mostly due to the fact that we
most likely have a capacity on how much “intelligence” we can have -
essentially we’re limited by our biology.

Lecture 7: Motivation and Emotion - Pt. 1

● Interpersonal Intelligence - ability to interact with other people + social
relationships.
● Intrapersonal Intelligence - ability to know yourself.
● Emotional intelligence is not tested by traditional IQ tests.
● Emotional intelligence - ability to reason about emotions and to use emotions to
enhance reasoning.
○ It’s also the identification of one’s emotions and your own emotional
experiences.
○ It’s also the ability to describe and manage one’s emotions. It’s also
detecting others' emotions.
● Individuals have different levels of emotional intelligence.
○ Those with HIGH emotional intelligence show LESS brain activation when
solving problems.

● Emotions can be your neural response. (ex, preparing for a fight-flight response)
● Emotions can be subjective feelings.
● Emotions can be physiological responses. (heart rate goes up or you might
sweat).
● Emotions can be cognitive responses (you might start thinking once you
experience a certain emotion - if you feel fearful, you could think of outcomes)
● Emotion inspires us to take action. (ex, fear motivates us to take action).
● An emotion is a positive or negative experience in response to a stimulus and
associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity.
○ They’re 2-dimensional.
■ Valence (positive or negative)
■ Psychological Arousal (severity - intensity)
● There’s many neural structures involved in most brain processes. (Amygdala)
● There’s 2 major neural structures related to emotion…
○ The amygdala. This is a primitive part of the limbic system that quickly
processes biologically relevant information.
○ The prefrontal cortex. This is a relatively advanced part of the brain that
slowly processes information rationally.
 ● Charles Darwin was interested in emotions, specifically facial expressions.
○ He proposed that facial expressions are evolved and therefore are
universal in the human population. - The Universality Hypothesis.
○ He believed facial expressions evolved to aid in survival.
● These facial expressions help us. For example…
○ Fear - your eyes widen, to be able to look out for other fear stimuli.
○ Those born blind, smile very similar to a human that can see. (innate)
○ 2-day-old infants produce disgusted facial expressions similar to those of
adults.
● Argument against UH is that some facial expressions are the same for different
emotions across different cultures.

Lecture 8: Motivation and Emotion - Pt. 2

● The Facial Feedback Hypothesis - holds that emotional facial expressions can
cause/change an individual’s emotional experience.
● One strategy used for hiding our emotions is intensification - making our facial
expressions stronger than our real emotional states. (ex, getting a present for
 your birthday, but you don’t like it, but still are grateful, so you intensify your
happiness).
● Another strategy is de-intensification - you need to have a reduced emotional
response to do something, so you reduce the intensity of an emotional
experience.
● Another strategy is masking - changing your emotional expression into
something that’s the opposite of what you’re REALLY feeling.
● Another strategy is neutralizing - you just maintain a neutral facial expression so
you’re not seen as happy or sad.
● Despite the strategies, people can still when an emotion is not real.
○ Morphology - some facial muscles are resistant to conscious change. (the
reliable muscles).
○ Symmetry - facial expressions are asymmetric and are often insincere.
○ Duration - sincere facial gestures last between 0.5 s and 5 s.
○ Temporal Patterning - microexpressions appear first and are sincere.
● When regulating emotions, there’s lots of factors to deal with. The more
emotional we are, the harder the emotions are to control.
● Emotional Regulation involves instinctive and learned strategies.
○ For the first 6 months, most regulation comes from patterns or some basic
gaze aversion will occur.
○ After 6 months, children will start to self-sooth, locomotion (moving away
from negative stimuli) and averting their gaze.
○ In adulthood, we might use distraction to regulate emotions. Suppression
is also used, where we simply try to not think of the thing bothering us.
We’re told these aren’t good ways to tackle emotions, but they can be
useful in certain periods of times. Affect labeling is also used where you
label the emotion you’re experiencing. Another way is re-appraisal - this is
where you experience a negative event, but think of it in a different way
(maybe approaching it positively).

Lecture 9: Motivation and Emotion - Pt. 3

● We use the term motivation to describe the psychological drive that helps to do
certain things.
● Motivation reason is the psychological reason for producing an action.
● Motivations are primarily driven by emotion. Our emotions change our actions by
giving us information about an object, event or individual.
○ Rational decisions are also based on emotions too.
● Brain damage to emotional regions of the brain (amygdala) can cause severe
indecision in patients!
 ● Plato and Aristotle believed that human motivation is centered on the hedonic
principle. - states that all motivation extends from attraction to pleasure and
avoidance of pain. The principle believes EVERYTHING we do, is in favor of
being able to attain pleasure.
○ We can trace “unpleasant activities” to the pleasure goal.
● Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy breaks down human motivation into more specific
categories.
○ Everyone starts at the bottom of the pyramid, and you can only move up
once you’ve obtained the needs of the current level.

● It’s also possible to go down the hierarchy, if you fail to maintain a certain need.
● At the bottom of the needs hierarchy is food and sex. They must be satisfied in
order to move up in the pyramid.
● The needs are called drives. We satisfy these drives with incentives.
● We can understand motivation through three psychological dimensions…
○ Intrinsic vs Extrinsic - extrinsic motivation tends to be relatively weak in
early childhood and among non-human animals.
○ Conscious vs Unconscious
○ Approach vs Avoidance - Approach motivation is motivation to experience
a positive outcome. Avoidance motivation is motivation to not experience a
negative outcome. Avoidance motivation is usually stronger

Lecture 10: Personality - Pt. 1

● Personality is all about individual differences one demonstrates compared to
other people. It’s one’s style of behavior, thought and feeling.
● Personality is relatively stable across time and situations.
● The study of personality is the study of both individual differences (idiographic
approach) and common trends in the population (nomothetic approach).
 ● The study of personality has 2 components…
○ Describing personality
○ Explaining personality
● To measure personality, we can observe one’s behavior. There’s lots of problems
with this, if we can’t see everything someone does or their thoughts, they might
also act differently just because they’re being watched.
● We can measure personality by taking one of 2 forms…
○ Personality inventories
○ Projective techniques (usually administered by a psychologist)
● Inventories rely on self-reports. They’re usually weak in validity and reliability.
● Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - it’s produced the same results in
individuals over and over again! It correlates with certain traits.
● The results of personality inventories can be biased. The test taker may also not
know everything about themselves.
● The MMPI has validity scales, which are sets of questions that attempt to
mitigate bias.

Lecture 11: Personality - Pt. 1

● TRAIT APPROACH: attempts to describe personalities as a series of traits.
○ Trait: a relatively stable disposition to behave in a particular and consistent
way. There’s many traits.
○ Researchers have used FACTOR ANALYSIS to reduce the infinite list of
traits, into the lowest possible set of traits, that still allow us to describe
people.
■ First, they have people rate themselves on hundreds of traits. (1-5)
■ Then, they determine which traits are highly correlated with one
another (ex, extroverted and outgoing are pretty much the same
thing), which they then combine into factors.
■ After, they find traits with NO correlation to one another, which are
then considered parts of separate factors.
● Under the trait approach using factor analysis, researchers found that the
following adjectives are highly correlated with one another (positively or
negatively):
○ Softhearted.
○ Trusting.
○ Helpful.
○ Ruthless.
○ Suspicious.
○ Uncooperative.
● ^ All of these adjectives are combined into one factor, under AGREEABLENESS.
 ● Using factor analysis, researchers came up with the 5-factor model of personality.
The big 5 personality traits ARE NOT correlated with one another.
○ For example, if someone scored really high in the extraversion category,
that doesn’t tell you anything about how they’ll score in the other
categories.

● Personality traits are relatively stable, and this stability increases across the
lifespan.
○ This means as you age, your personality stays/or similar than it does
when you're younger.
○ This stability is also known as Differential Continuity/Rank-Order Stability:
our rank order in personality traits stays the same across our life.
*notice in the chart, most changes in personality occur in younger ages, which is why
the bar is lower.
● Although our rank order remains fairly consistent, the MEAN LEVELS of traits in
our cohort change. For example, you might become more extroverted as you get
older. Or, as you age, you might have more emotional stability.

● Intraindividual Change: these are significant changes in a person's personality

from one time to the next. It’s rare, and tends to occur after life-changing
experiences, like trauma or even positive changes.
● EXAM ANALOGY: how does rank-order stability, mean-level change and
intra-individual change co-exist?
○ The students who do best on the first exam, tend to do best on the second
and third too (differential continuity).
○ Everyone tends to do better on the second and third exams (mean-level
change).
○ Some students, based on changes they have made throughout the term,
change their rank order (intra-individual scores).
● A Biological Explanation for Traits…
○ Genetics (the largest single factor). The big 5 factors have a heritability
factor of between 0.35 and 0.49.
■ A score of 0, means genetics play NO role in the traits. (very rare in
psychology).
■ A score of 1, means genetics is completely responsible for traits
(hair/eye color).
● ^ These scores are very high! BUT, 50-65% of variability in personality is still due
to various life experiences.
● We should evidence of our personalities, way back when we’re infants.
○ Temperament is an infant’s characteristics, activity level, mood, attention
span and distractibility. These are predictive of adult’s personalities.
● Most research on personality has come from WEIRD cultures (western,
educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).
● Studies have shown that the Big-5 are universal, but others have shown they are
not.
○ HOWEVER, prevalence of personality traits does vary from culture to
culture. Meaning culture plays a role in determining an individual’s
personality. (50-65% comes from experience).
● Social Cognitive Approach: according to this approach, personality is how a
person deals with the situations encountered in daily life.
○ How we construct situations in our mind.
○ How we respond to situations in our own minds.
■ This is different from the trait approach, where people behave the
same way in most situations.

● Social Cognitive Theorists argue we base our behavior on personal constructs,

which we use to make sense of our worlds. We organize the people in our lives
in different ways.
○ They argue certain dimensions, based on which we group people, tell us
about our personality.
● Our personalities also differ from one another through outcome expectancies.
○ How we expect our behavior to bring us closer to or further from our goals.
● Freud developed the Psychodynamic Approach. He was a doctor, practicing
neurology and treating patients suffering from “hysteria” - according to him it was
exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement - we don’t use this term
today, it was particularly sexist, targeting women who strayed away from gender
norms.
○ Developed psychoanalysis based on his patients’ free associations,
fantasies and dreams.

● Psychodynamic Theory: the theory that personality is formed by needs, strivings

and desires largely operating outside of awareness - motives that can also
produce emotional disorders.
○ Mental processes outside of our awareness - dynamic unconsciousness.
This is an active system encompassing a lifetime of hidden memories,
deepest instincts and desires and one’s inner struggles over life.
● Freud divided the dynamic unconscious into 3 parts.
○ ID: unconscious, animal desires.
○ EGO: allows us to deal with life’s practical demands.
○ SUPEREGO: internalization of cultural/social rules.
■ Freud determined our personality is determined by which of the 3
parts is dominant.
■ Anxiety was caused due to a conflict between the 3 parts. To
resolve the anxiety, we use certain defense mechanisms. (refer to
textbook notes for these!)
● Within a psychodynamic approach, we can measure personality based on
projective techniques - tests designed to reveal inner aspects of one’s
personalities by analysis of their responses to a certain stimuli.
○ Rorschach Inkblot Test: an image is put in front of you, asking you to
determine what it is. Psychologists are interested in responses that are
different from what they usually hear.
○ Thematic Apperception Test: uses a similar technique, but uses a series of
photos in which the participant needs to make a story to go along with the
 photos. Psychologists look for the tiny details someone puts into the story,
and base their analysis on that.
● Projective techniques are problematic since the results are difficult to interpret
and interpretations are too subjective
● Humanistic-Existential Approach - have a positive, optimistic view of human
nature, believe that humans have free will.
○ Free will makes this approach distinct from other approaches.
○ Argues humans seek out self-actualization; everyone tries to climb
Maslow’s Hierarchy.
● Humanists argue our personality differences arise from environmental constraints
against climbing our needs hierarchy.